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Friday, July 19, 2013

Neutral Palette Showdown! Part Two

MAC, The Naked's & Nude'tude Palettes Review

Continuing the neutral palette showdown with my reviews of some more neutral eyeshadow palettes. If you haven't already check out part one of this series, I reviewed all of the Urban Decay Naked palettes, so check it out!

So getting right into it, I'm going to start with my custom MAC palette. I purchased all of the eyeshadows and the palette itself off of the MAC website. I picked out all of the eyeshadows over the past year and a half. Each pro palette refill pan costs $12 and I have 19 eyeshadows in my palette. The colors that I have are the following (from top left to bottom right):

Okay, so on to the actual review now.
This is my favorite palette, part of that is that I chose the colors myself. Mac products in general are extremely good quality and the eyeshadows are amazing. I love all of the colors that I have. I don't always use all of the colors though, but this is my most used palette hands down. When I get ready in the mornings this is the palette I reach for every time. Even if I use a different palette I always add a little Mac eyeshadow to my looks.
The matte shades are by far my favorite finish but I don't have complaints about the pearl/satin finish. My absolute favorite eyeshadows in this palette are Mystery, Cork, Wedge, Satin Taupe, and Naked Lunch. I also use Mystery as my eyebrow powder, at it works perfectly.
I would absolutely recommend MAC eyeshadows for everyone. They are a bit pricey but it is definitely worth it. The eyeshadows are pretty decently sized and they last a long time. I have hit pan on three of my eyeshadows (you can see in the picture) because I use them every single day, and I will be repurchasing them when I run out.

Next on my list to review us Victoria's Secret the Naked's palette.
I purchased this at Victoria's Secret for $28. I think if you wanted to buy this you would have to go into the store because I couldn't find it on the website. There are 10 eyeshadow's in this palette. It also comes with a black pencil liner and a dua-ended brush. The colors in the palette are the following:
Barely Pink, Copper Sand, Graystone, Brown Sable, Sparkling Black, Warm Vanilla, Tawny Pink, Smoky Lilac, Sparkling Brown and Charcoal Black.

This palette was very disappointing. I love the Victoria's Secret bath and lotion products so I thought I would give their cosmetics a try. Needless to say this palette made me change my mind. The colors in the palette are really pretty, but the inside of the palette just looked cheap. The dual-ended brush was the same on both ends, and the quality was pretty much garbage. Also the eyeliner was really hard to use, if I wanted the color to show up I would have to press really hard. So the eyeliner wasn't good either.
Now onto the eyeshadow itself, like I said the colors in the palette looked really good. But then I started using them. They eyeshadows are not pigmented at all, and when I tried to pack it on to try and get some color payoff there was so much fallout it was ridiculous. The light colors were all the same on my skin tone and the darker shadows were not pigmented. There was also way too much shimmer/glitter in the shadows, which just made more fallout.
I really tried to give this palette a chance but it just didn't work for me. I would not recommend this palette just from my experience with it. I think it was just a waste of money to be honest. The only thing that I like about it is the outside packaging.

The last palette that I'm going to review for this post is The Balms Nude'tude palette. I purchased this from their website and it was $36. This palette comes with 12 eyeshadows the colors are the following with the finish in parenthesis:
Top row-Sassy (satin), Selfish (satin), Sophisticated (satin), Sexy (matte), Serious (matte).
Bottom row-Snobby (frost), Standoffish (frost), Sultry (matte), Schitzo (satin), Silly (matte), Sleek (matte)

I really like this palette. It is much slimmer than some of the other palettes I have talked about mainly the Naked palettes. It has a magnetic closure so its nice for traveling. The actual eyeshadow pans are a bit smaller than most other eyeshadow pans.
The colors in the palette are very impressive. Before I purchased this palette, I had never tried any products from The Balm. So i wasn't really expecting much. But like I said I was really impressed, the eyeshadows are very nicely pigmented and the payoff on the eyes is amazing. I would definitely say that these eyeshadows compare very well to higher end shadows. There is a nice range of colors too, there are a bunch of different lighter shades that are great for highlighting. Then there are some bronze colors in there that are perfect for an everyday look. And lastly the darker sexier shades that are great for a smokey eye. There are a few colors that are a little glittery which causes some fallout but its not too bad. I usually tap off the brush so I minimize the fallout.
Overall I really like this palette. Its also a nice cheaper neutral palette when you don't want to spend $50 plus on a palette. I would highly recommend this palette because the quality is pretty close to higher end products.

So this is the end for part two of the neutral palette showdown. I hope these reviews are helpful.
In the next blog post I'm going to review some drugstore and more inexpensive palettes. They are the wet'n wild palette, a Coastal Sense palette, and the Makeupgeek eyeshadows.

2 comments:

I never knew you could customize your own MAC palette! Definitely something I plan on trying out. Also, I love the balm! I tried their highlighter in a birchbox and its great. I didn't know they had this palette so I will be checking it out. Thanks for the review!

Yeah, I love being able to choose the colors I want in a palette. The balm is so underrated, I think, but their stuff is awesome. I have their Bahama Mama bronzer and I literally used it everyday until it ran out, it was perfect!